HISTORICAL GARDENS 299 



Yet it will still adapt itself to the grimy limits of a 

 London garden, and flower year after year. The Grey- 

 coat School Garden is quite refreshing ; the plants look 

 so healthy and prosperous that it is really encourag- 

 ing. The interior of the house, with oak beams and 

 panels, is all in keeping, and the long class-room, with 

 windows looking out on the bright Garden, is most ideal. 

 As, at the close of their afternoon studies, the girls, sing- 

 ing sweetly in parts, join in some familiar hymn, and the 

 melodious sounds are wafted across the sunlit Garden, it 

 is hard to believe in the existence of the crowded, un- 

 savoury slums of Westminster, only a stone's throw from 

 this "haunt of ancient peace." 



Among its many charms and associations Westminster 

 Abbey can lay claim to possessing one of the oldest 

 gardens in England. The ground still occupied by the 

 space known as the "College Garden" was part of the 

 infirmary garden of the ancient monastery. It cannot 

 trace back its history with the Abbey to the Saxon 

 Sebert, but when Edward the Confessor's pile began to 

 rise, and all the usual adjuncts of a monastery gathered 

 round it, the infirmary with the necessary herb-garden of 

 simples for treating the sick monks would be one of the 

 first buildings to be completed. One of the most peace- 

 ful and retired spots within the Abbey precincts is the 

 Little Cloister, which was the infirmary in early days. 

 When the Great Cloister was finished in 1365, the 

 Little Cloister was taken in hand. Payments for work 

 on "the New Cloister of the Infirmary" appear in the 

 accounts from 1377, and it was completed in 1390, and 

 that year the centre was laid down in turf. The garden 

 belonging to the infirmary covered all the space now 

 occupied by the " College Garden," and joined the 



